News, People, Ideas

Turmoil In Ukraine: N.H. Reacts (NHPR)

March 05, 2014

As a guest on NHPR’s “The Exchange,” Dartmouth’s Yuliya Komska discusses the current turmoil in Ukraine’s Crimea region.

“The Crimean situation was in many respects not really expected by a lot of Ukrainians,” says Komska, an assistant professor of German and a Dartmouth Public Voices fellow. “I think that Ukrainians have tried to really consolidate the nation and I think that is where the protests have been very different from the previous 20 years of divisions in Ukraine. … What they really tried to do was come up with a unified vision, with a unified strategy for where Ukraine should go in the future, and if anything, bridge the divisions that have been taking place.”

Komska, originally from Lviv, Ukraine, continues, “Russia’s intervention in Crimea was perhaps even a conscious erosion of the pattern to bridge the divisions and probably planted additional seeds that could sow discord between Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers in Ukraine.”